Editorials
A Fuzzy ‘Friday the 13th’: Re-Examining the Horror of… ‘Naughty Bear’!?
Inspired by slasher films and games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Naughty Bear. Either that, or you’ve subconsciously erased it from memory. We wouldn’t blame you, to be honest.
Snark aside, developer Artificial Mind and Movement had quite a fun premise on its hands with Naughty Bear. It’s a game which takes place within a kid’s TV show where a colony of bears frolic around a fairytale forest. Thing is, one of these bears is not like the others, lacking their same perfect stitching or vibrant colors.
The game starts with the titular Naughty Bear being late to a party. The battle-worn teddy decides that he no longer wants to be an outsider and so goes out of his way to make a present. He’s turned over a new leaf. However, when the others bears get a glimpse of his gift (which is confusing, as its a generic box with a bowtie) they humiliate him.
So, as is tradition in children’s TV shows, they eventually overcome their differences and viewers come away enlightened, having learned an important lesson and conflict resolution and acceptance. Actually, no, Naughty returns his shack, grabs a machete, and immediately goes about enacting his revenge.
If there’s one thing the game gets right, it’s the fun juxtaposition of this cartoon world with the kind of murderous rampage reserved for films such as Friday the 13th. Bizarrely, there are also a number of parallels between Naughty Bear and the recent Friday the 13th video game. The way you hunt down enemies while trying not to fall for their diversions reminded me of stalking camp counselors in last year’s multiplayer murder sim.
The bears will try to flee from Naughty, running to cars and boats. Others will shut themselves inside, barricade doors, try to call the cops, or, as a last resort, attack with whatever weapons they can find though it’s often not enough. Even the way executions are carried out all echo Friday the 13th. To make things just that little more intriguing, the developer of Naughty Bear would later become Behaviour Interactive, the team behind Friday the 13th’s gaming rival, Dead By Daylight.
Sadly, Naughty Bear wasn’t much fun to play. The repetitive loop of chasing bears and killing them off quickly wore thin with little variation to keep players hooked. The game’s focus on score-chasing and keeping a multiplier running seemed completely at odds with how the game was being pitched. Each stage would rapidly turn into a massacre with stealth going completely out the window.
Playful in premise yet sloppy in its execution, Naughty Bear reviewed in the low 40s when it launched more than eight years ago on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It, therefore, came as a surprise when 505 Games published a sequel in 2012, even if it was download-only. It’s not a game we’d strongly recommend though is definitely worth picking up if you want to see how it translates slasher tropes and have a few bucks to burn.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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